Session 10
Game date May 21, 2011 Game notes 8 XP from last session Game log August 27th (night, cont.) * Over the night, the festivities die down with the fire, and everyone is getting ready to turn in for the night. There's room for all to sleep inside but 6. Moore wants the ones outside to be armed and take shifts. ** Lynch takes a shift with the Sorenson, Sykes, Masters, and now Dr. Russel since they're low on gunmen. Russel and Lynch share a shift. * We have dreams again... August 28th * Night in the village passes uneventfully. A few of the village warriors keep watch within and without the village over night. ** Moore thanks Thomas for keeping the radio going and mentions that we will radio for a plane not long after we get out of the village. ** The reporter would love to know when the next time the radio message is sent so that he can report in, especially after the ritual last night. * The tribe has a simple spread of raw vegetables and gruel. Owen speaks with the village elder to ask if he can get some advice on tracking animals through the jungle. He goes into the jungle with the shaman and a couple of the warriors. Since he's got pretty good experience as a tracker, they focus on more specific plant and animal lore. * The shaman address Moore and the party as we prepare to head out. He hopes that we enjoyed their hospitality. They don't get many guests especially from so far away. He wishes us luck in finding out compatriots. He asks that the blessings of the Earth Father be upon us and invites us back if we return. * We travel further into the jungle as days pass. People start to fall sick again. This weeks victims are the botanist Millhouse Brice, the assistant to the old linguist Conrad Felginer, Louie LaRoche the radio tech, and Tomas Lopez of the camp crew. ** Owen hunts down a capybara for people to eat. * Brad checks to see if Dr. Russel is still carrying his medallions, but he's put them back again since he notices Luo acting superstitious around the ones the others carry. * Another week passes. Luo has severe insomnia which leaves him weak and utterly ineffective. (99 on the mind check and a failure on body.) Russel also succumbs to a fever and joint aches. Green gives him some morphine which doesn't help that much, and what he does for Tomas doesn't help him much. * Morale is somewhat down with the resurgence of fevers. We end at the edge of a plateau and have to get down and retrace to go east. However, this is a good enough place to make a temporary base, signal for a plane, and send the sick back before they die. ** Thomas calls up Mike O'Toole of the flight crew. After some small talk, he mentions that he was wondering how we'd been doing after the excitement of the last telegraph from the reporter. ** About the only people left behind plane people and communication. * Catching up on the news, there's been some communications from the Lexington expedition about their own travels, but there hasn't been anything in the past couple of weeks. ** There was a pretty strong public reaction to Starkweather's death as he was a big symbol of the expedition. Lexington has issued no statement in reaction. * By the time we make camp and make contact hours have gone by. We give them the rough coordinates, and they make plans to take off in the morning. * During the night, two things happen: Tomas Lopez dies. (Luo deals with it.) We all hear and strangled scream from beyond the camp off in the jungle. Owen rounds up most of the people with guns to go investigate. Dr. Russel and the Sorensons stay behind to keep an eye on the camp. * Lynch, Sikes, and Masters run into the jungle. They come across a body very much like the last one in that it has been opened up and hollowed out along with the skull. Lynch finds two sets of tracks leading into the jungle away from the body. They are very odd tracks, and they are paralleling us as we move through the jungle. ** Two pairs of tracks. One heads east and has large, splayed toes and leaves a small depression of shallow tracks behind. ** One set of tracks heading west with four clawed legs. * There is a bloodstained photo in the pocket of the corpse of a man and a woman. The man Owen recognizes as Timothy Cartier. * Owen tracks the oddball tracks to the east with Sikes, but they lose track of the eastern beast. Trying to the west, they manage to follow for several minutes. The trail it follows it erratic, and it seems to chew on plants here and there along the way. The tracks eventually disappear, and there's a claw mark on a branch 10' up that might have been made by it. * Back at the camp, thing seem pretty calm. Plenty of jungle noises, though a little muted. Dr. Russel and the Sorensons are keeping an eye in the direction of the screams. After about half and hour, we hear a rustling in the brush in our directions. * A couple of forms come bursting out of the brush at us. It's Luo and Masters. They bring over Dr. Russel and talk to Moore. We talk about the creature following us and Moore speculates that it may be out for revenge for being injured. We plan to have the plane crew keep an eye out in the hopes that we can track the creature and rescue Ms. Grey and to ask them to bring the gunpowder to rig up some bombs to drive it off again next time. * There is a scream from the edge of camp and a commotion there, this time from the west where the other scream came from the east. Someone is writhing around on the ground. * The remaining PCs in the camp see Dr. Green on the ground with a thing resting on his face. It is about the size of a backpack. It has two rear legs that are long with shorter front legs, both sets are splayed out. The toes are long and splayed. There's a rippling skirt of flesh splayed out around the creature like a duvet. Several pairs of compound eyes on its head and a pair of long fangs being withdrawn from Dr. Green from his face. ** Dr. Russel fires his gun as a warning shot to try to scare it off, but it leaps into the crowd and lands on Hal Spraglen's back -- the journalist / camera man (but not the photojournalist, Brendan's backup character). ** Luo tries to tend to Dr. Green, but his eyes are rolled back into his face, and his cheeks are beginning to swell. Luo starts treating him for shock since there's not much else he can do. Matheson tries to get the creature off of Hal but fails because the thing is slippery and slimy. It sinks its fangs into Spraglen's back. ** Matheson attempts to knock it off again and hits it. He hooks his hands into the edges of its gaping mouth and pries it off. * Suddenly Lynch is in another place. Chaos is all around him. He sees someone's back and Matheson very close up. There's weight on top of him and pain in his jaw and a sweet, joyous taste in his mouth. There's a jerk and everything flips over. * Matheson holds the creature down as Dr. Russel comes over to shoot the thing. Lynch can feel passivity and fear through the thing. Dr. Russel shoots the thing in the torso and sprays blood on Hal, Clayton, and Thomas. Owen gets an incapacitating headache and passes out on its death. * Sikes comes running into the camp at this time, gun drawn. He reports to Moore that he tracked the creatures for a while and lost them. * Luo tries to get Dr. Green's assistant to help out and has to shake him out of freaking out at events. They go looking for herbs and find something with Sikes' added help. He manages to stabilize Dr. Green but loses Hal. * Things calm down after a while, and people realize that Lynch hasn't been seen since he and Sikes split up. Luo asks Sikes about tracking the creatures. He mentions that the first splayed tracks they failed to follow could have belonged to that creature. They ask each other about Lynch, and Sikes mentions that Lynch told him to run on ahead when they heard the gunshot. Sikes says that the creature may have been one of the fuckers that killed our guys but there's at least one more out there. ** The decision is made to wait until the morning to track down what happened to Lynch. Either he's off doing something on his own, or one of those creatures got him. ** Luo manages to use aura sight for once and notices some growing corruption on the Sorensons, Joan, and Moore. The latter two have a more centralized blotch in the torso area. Russel's corruption has been unchanged since last time he saw them. The Sorenson's taint is spreading towards their heads as well. Luo also sees several different sources of corruption in the auras of the jungle. He tries to get Dr. Russel to go off with him into the woods to investigate under the auspices of tracking down Lynch, but Dr. Russel wants to wait rather than go off alone in the night. * Lynch regains consciousness. It's dark and he can hear the noises of the jungle. He tries to bed down somewhere and he notices something about the size of a backpack in the trees above him. He attacks it, and it turns out to be a howler monkey. September 10th * Morning dawns to the sounds of howler monkeys. Lynch awakens to find an anaconda cuddling him for warmth. It's not crushing him to eat, and it's still sluggish at this time of the morning. Brendan asks some questions about whether he can tame the snake rather than just possess it, but apparently not. He considers killing it for food, but it looks in his eyes and he backs off. He instead casts a spell to establish a connection with the snake and tells it to go hunt down something that isn't him. * Back at camp, Dr. Green's condition is unchanged. Moore adds medical supplies to what the plane needs to bring, and Sikes and the Sorensons are ready to go searching for Lynch. ** Sikes leads the team to where the last place he saw him was. We see Sikes tracks and other boot tracks. The tracks wander off for 2000'. There's an indentation from where he collapsed, then more tracks to a tree. Another change in direction, and then the tracks head off SW. He move in stealthily after him. ** Meanwhile, Owen's anaconda is in the trees. He hears some rustling, a small squeal, and feels a feeling of triumph through the connection. Sikes screams and drops his gun and starts clawing at his face. Something sprayed something dark red on his face. ** Dr. Russel fires at whatever sprayed him and misses and hits one of the Sorensons. The other brother goes to aid him as Sikes is still screaming and there's something hovering in the air in front of him. ** Lynch hears the scream and shot and calls out for us. Unfortunately, Dr. Russel is distracted by a beetle the size of a dachshund. He ducks as it sprays something on the back of his head and flies over him. ** The beetle pauses on a tree. Dr. Russel clips it as it spreads its wings and tries to fly away. * Sikes' face is messed up pretty badly. It's covered in goo and he's clawed off a good bit of his face getting it off. His skin is kind of burned. The back of Dr. Russel's head starts to burn and he frantically wipes it off, taking hair and skin off too. * We limp back to camp. Luo tends to the bullet wound first and finds that it was lucky that the wound just missed the arteries and has no chance of bleeding out. Those of us hit by the bug's ooze were hit by some sort of acid with a lot in common with blood. Sikes eyes have been affected, and he has a lot of tissue damage. Russel has patchy hair on the sides and in the back and plenty of burns scars and suppurating wounds. Luo also looks at Owen and finds three self-inflicted cuts. He also sees his aura, which is vibrant and strong despite his wounds. However, there is a large discoloration covering his back, reaching around his torso, and starting to reach up into his head. * There is a droning sound in the sky as a plane comes into view. The plane makes a landing, and Moore is there to organize the offloading of goods and the shipping off of the sick and the infirm. Green, Sikes, and LaRoche are put on the plane to go back. Matheson and Russel are offered a chance to go get professional healthcare for their illnesses (and retire from the mission at least until the next flight in Lord knows how long). Both decide to stick it out. * Moore has us breaking open boxes and redistributing them. Meanwhile, Lynch goes back into the jungle to find his pet anaconda. He cuts himself and chants the spell again to control the snake. He tries to get it to attack a howler monkey, and a band of howler monkeys attack it as it climbs into the tree. * Evening falls. Everyone sleeps. Neal Sorenson, Lynch, Masters, and Russel are doing watch now. September 11th * The next morning we head back to try to find the base of the plateau and continue east. Lynch and Masters trailblaze for everyone while Neil makes hunting trips for everyone. Lynch wrestles a pet pig to drag along as a pet / food animal. Neal also drags back a deer on a tether. * Were down to 22 with 26 people gone. A week of travel passes. Russel recovers a little, and Matheson worsens. George Sorenson is doing a lot better; he has a pretty strong constitution. Lynch's wounds are healed pretty well. * Over the next week, there's sort of a general itchy feeling that we're being watched. ** Luo's aura site detects something, and he follows it with Lynch to a strangler vine that's got an odd aura. The ants on the tree its on are also tainted with a different flavor. ** Lynch ditches Luo and starts casting spells on some of the stuff that's been ID'ed. He apparently messes something up and kills the tree before wandering back. * Lynch meets Neal when he gets back. There's an ululating cry and a bunch of scantily clad natives wielding clubs and blowguns come screaming into camp. Lynch shoots one in the leg as he calls out a warning to people. Russel wakes up and grabs his gun. * Russel guns one down. Lynch feels a sting on the neck. * Russel misses one native and gets a hard club hit to the back in return. Owen drops another native and gets mildly whacked. Masters gets smacked down much worse. * Luo notices a commotion at the edge of camp. Something rustling in the brushes. * Matheson joins the fray with a wrench but isn't a skilled fighter. Russel misses his target and gets hit with a club again. * Owen chants some sort of spell after shooting a native in the face and takes control of the natives. They drop their clubs and start walking towards the nearest edge of camp. The rustling comes in from the nearest edge of camp; it seems to be a large mass of snakes, ants, and other bugs. They swarm over the natives who do not react seemingly as they fall to the ground being bitten, poisoned, etc. ** We all have to make violence checks for seeing the natives' horrible deaths. Luo and Matheson freeze in horror as he made out too many details of the poisons and bites. ** We sort of retcon that Matheson built a flamethrower from some parts taken from the plane (and some gas from it). Lynch straps it on just before he passes out from the poison dart. * The bugs dissipate over 10 minutes after devouring the natives. Russel passes out from injuries too. Masters has a severe blow to the head. Luo also finds Neal Sorenson passed out with a machete in his hand near the now dead deer. Category:Session Logs